Mimesis
by cywlwhip
Summary: Growing up knowing she's a clone has, probably, done irrevocable damage to her psyche. Rachel's pretty sure of it, is sure that's what her psychologist is writing down, over and over again in his notebook, during the sessions she's been having since she was six years old. (Originally published elsewhere) WARNING: clone/clone


Growing up knowing she's a clone has, probably, done irrevocable damage to her psyche. Rachel's pretty sure of it, is sure that's what her psychologist is writing down, over and over again in his notebook, during the sessions she's been having since she was six years old.

That's when they'd told her. Age six, when she was just grasping the concept of learning to share, her parents sat her down and explained that they weren't actually her parents, she was grown in a lab, and she had hundreds of clones, six-year-old girls who looked just like her. She can't remember if they'd tried to explain the experiment to her then, or if she'd added that memory later, but she distinctly remembers her "mother" trying to explain that though those other girls looked like her, they might not act like her. That was one of the things they were trying to find out.

And, you know, the whole 'effects of human cloning' thing. They'd couched the hard science of cloning in the social sciences, the behavioural patterns they hoped to observe: the long term effects of being a clone and – and this is where they'd turned to her and given her a look imbued with so much meaning, even she understood despite not knowing that the words meant – the psychological effects of clone self-awareness. Perhaps, six years after the fact, they were over the scientific miracle of her existence, or perhaps they didn't think she'd understand. She knows she didn't; her existence, the existence of her clones, was a series of stunning realizations that had laid themselves in front of her as she got older, understood more of the science and of how real children are made. Realizations that hit her with unexpected and breathless magnitude at the most mundane moments, like sitting on a bus and looking around and realizing that everyone else on that bus was, in some way, different from every other person on the planet. Everyone, of course, but her.

What she really remembered of that day was the feeling of the people she'd thought were her parents, calmly, irrevocably, casting her off. Years later, when she finally got access to some of the experiment files, she wondered how she'd even come to call them Mom and Dad at all. The files had been very clear that they never encouraged the behaviour. Her observer must have been equally baffled; their surprise evident in the solitary line they recorded on the day she started:

[October 4, 1988] Subject referred to Drs Williamson and Whitely as Mom and Dad.

Rachel supposes she must have gotten it from television. She was allowed to watch; aside from being under constant supervision and control, she had a very normal childhood. Yes, she must have gleaned it from there and assumed the two people in her life corresponded with the two people in the lives of the children onscreen. After all, she was just like them, right?

She hadn't, she thought wryly, even cared that the people taking care of her were both women. The short haired one was Dad, obviously (it did perplex her, why this denotation relied on hair length; couldn't it change at any time? Did it mean that whoever had long hair when you were born was your mom, and they had to keep it long forever?)  
Hence the report-writer's surprise, the twofold discoveries of the strength of social patterning and imprinting, and Rachel's fundamental inability to grasp proper gender roles and societal norms.

The latter was something she'd never outgrow.

She wouldn't outgrow the imprinting, either, which she'd only admit to herself in her fleeting moments of weakness that she still had to chase away - imagine, a grown woman swatting away nightmares. No, her presence here was a choice, a methodical weighing of facts that landed her on the right decision.

Who had given her those facts, who had made her the person that would see it this way - no. No.

They suspected it was loneliness.

Rachel knew they noticed, the way she mooned over Danielle. She had her suspicions but she'd also found the way into their secure server – they didn't know she'd been able to do that, she'd thought proudly. (They did.)

And there it was, in electronic ink: "Subject shows unnatural attraction towards fellow subject, 324B16, Danielle Fournier"

Unnatural. She wondered if it meant gay, or that she was attracted to her clone, who was, for all intents and purposes, her sibling. Probably both. For an organization perpetrating human cloning and actively fighting the church, they were remarkably old-fashioned.  
She'd been smitten with Danielle from the first moment she saw her. She was young when they'd showed her Danielle's picture as they explained to her what being a clone truly meant. Rachel had reached out to the picture, to the girl who was so different and yet, the same. It fascinated her. Here was this girl, just like her, but she was French, she heard them say, and liked to play the piano and took swimming lessons.

Rachel played the piano and liked to swim, too.

Maybe they could do it together. No, the people formerly known as her parents had explained. Rachel couldn't meet any of the other clones, not yet. They wanted to let them grow up first, see if they were the same without even meeting each other, and took the picture out of Rachel's hands.

That was the first time Rachel had her heart broken by Danielle Fournier.

She saw Danielle several times as she grew up; the clones were brought in once a year, under a medically induced coma, for heavy-duty testing that sometimes took days. France was so close that they'd just brought Danielle over the channel, to her.  
Danielle always looked peaceful as she slept. Happy, Rachel thought. She wondered if that's what she looked like too, when she was being tested on – she was awake for most of the poking and prodding, but for the yearly exam she was out cold. Did she have that same small smile on her face?

She couldn't really imagine herself smiling.

Rachel could see herself in the mirror, see herself watching Danielle and she wondered, was there someone watching her too, loving her from afar? Rachel asked to be awake for her yearly exams from then on. They're painful, yes – there's a reason they kept her unconscious for the procedures – but at least now she knows: the only people watching her are the scientists who've been observing her her whole life.

It took Rachel years to notice that she only ever saw Danielle being tested, even though she knew there were other clones. There was nothing in the files to suggest that this was anything other than an accident, but Rachel couldn't help wondering, feeling like she was in a side experiment of some kind, off the books but equally as interesting. A clone enamored with another clone – the sociologists must have had a field day with that one.

Those first childhood pangs of longing and connection grew and twisted as she got older, turned into the hurricane of lust and love thanks to her teenage hormones, the growing awakening of just who she was. The fantasies had started simple, small, when she was a child. Playing duets with Danielle – Dani, she would call her – yelling and shrieking as they ran around the back yard, holding hands and swinging arms as they walked down the street, chattering away about anything and everything. The innocent fantasies grew and twisted as she did, turned to nervous first kisses and cuddling while they watched TV and sly smiles as they dodged parents and monitors to go down to the river and whittle away their days lying on blankets and holding each other close.

And when her hands crept lower for the first time, in her dark bedroom where she knew they were watching but couldn't, hadn't, cared less in years, it was with Dani's smile at the forefront of her mind, the small smirk on her face as she lay, unconscious, on the gurney, doctors swirling around her as Rachel watched on the other side of the glass.

They let her see Dani awake, once, on the other side of a two-way mirror. They'd brought Rachel to France just to see it, see as Danielle met with a psychologist for what she thought was a school-wide checkup. Rachel couldn't understand what Dani was saying, French lessons never quite at the top of her to-do list at school, though they would be now that'd she'd made the connection between speaking French and speaking with Dani. But despite not understanding a word her twin said, she was entranced by the way Dani moved, so similar and yet so different from her. Rachel's heart fluttered as she watched Dani smile, frown, get up and storm across the room, yelling about something; felt herself falling into something deeper and deeper that she realized must be love.

She'd reached out to Dani, touching the class lightly with her fingertips, desperate to touch, to know, but then a Dyad employee had cleared their throat, mentioned how touching the glass could alert the subject and Rachel pulled her hand back, stung, and realized her psychologist was there, too, scribbling notes in the corner and giving her long, assessing looks.

She should have been more alarmed to realize that it wasn't Dani being studied that day, but she was too entranced, too in love, to care. If being observed was the price of admission, she'd gladly pay it.

Rachel's not sure when she started to rebel against them. It seemed like a gradual thing.

But one day, and she can't (won't) remember which, Rachel got tired of those bounds, of the tacit understanding and mutual best interest and all that crap they seemed to be spouting off at every turn. After years of mutually agreed captivity, she was tired of it. Exhausted, really, but with that teenage anger that burned in righteous indignation. Who gave them the right to hold her like this? They weren't her parents (they emphatically weren't, weren't, were not) and she was pretty sure she wasn't the ward of the state, because the state didn't even know of the specifics of her existence. So what hold did they have over her? They made her? Big deal. These were the people that had made a six year old girl sign a contract of inhabitation so, yeah, maybe they weren't the greatest people in the world.

Her rebellions started small. Leaving, she decided, would be too easy (or perhaps, too hard). Leaving wouldn't really punish them for what they'd done, what they were doing to her. But messing with their experiments would. In hindsight, her ploys were laughably transparent, and probably gave them more insights than she withheld. She became sullen in interviews one day, only to become a ball of manic energy - so very unlike her - the next. The effort exhausted her but the gratification of imagining outlier dots on her personality spreadsheet made her grin and bounce in her toes as she walked away from her sessions. It was subtle, small, yes, but she was hitting them where it hurt.

So when she saw her file, hacking in further than she'd ever done before, and saw no outliers, no outside behaviour, she felt the bile rise in her throat and she'd lost it, flown into a rage and destroyed everything in sight, stalking down the halls breaking things and equipment and people to show them all that they hadn't broken her.

It was then that she saw Dani again, strapped to a table for her yearly intensive exam. Rachel bashed her hands against the window, screamed for her clone, her sister, her friend, to wake up. She'd kicked in the door (you don't need locks when the animals agree to be in the zoo), ripped out the IV and shaken her awake.

Dani had been terrified, paralyzed by the sight of her exact match, recoiled in fear as Rachel shouted at her, we have to get away from here and come with me, I'll protect you. Rachel was just trying to help, but Dani was so afraid, crying, saying nothing and maybe in hindsight Rachel should have realized that what Dani was afraid of was waking up in a strange place with a stranger screaming in a strange language and not, as Rachel had thought then, of her. Of her unnatural instincts that must have been written across her face.

She didn't have time to wallow in the rejection before the hands came and dragged her away, roughly pulling her down the corridor as she screamed and thrashed, because maybe Dani didn't love her too but that didn't mean she shouldn't be saved. She was manhandled into an office she'd never seen before, shoved into a chair and handcuffed - handcuffed! – to it. That had sent a thrill of satisfaction down her spine; they were afraid of her. Tying her down meant that they feared she would take control.

The man who sat down across from her with a sigh what felt like hours later was a stranger, unfamiliar, and any thoughts of power she'd entertained as she'd waited, testing the bonds of the handcuffs against her skin until they left a mark, flew away. He looked her straight in the eye and asked her point blank what they were going to do with her.

The thousand replies she'd thought out, words she could spit on their faces and watch in glee as they tried to wipe up, evaporated out of her mouth and she was left speechless in terror.

He'd told her that interfering with a subject was of the gravest offense, that they thought she'd known better. Now Danielle would have nightmares, he said. The experiment wasn't ruined, was what he'd really said, and Rachel hated herself and everyone else for that fact, hated that no matter what she did she couldn't seem to hurt them in the way that they'd hurt her.

And then he was explaining the word rumspringa to her, like she was six years old again, all careful definitions and simple terms, but all Rachel heard was that they were sending her away and that was the last thing she's wanted. How could she show them how wrong they were if she wasn't even there?

New York City was a terrifying blur, too much colour, too many people. She'd stumbled out of the airport, exhausted and with the bag they'd shoved into her hands as she'd been pushed out her door. She climbed into the first taxi she saw and told it to take her to Times Square. "A Limey, huh?" was all the driver had said and her returning glare must have been enough to silence him because he didn't say a word after that.

They had given her some money, of course, but the support ended there. She had to find her own way, he'd said, make her own mistakes and find out if "freedom" was what she really wanted. He'd said it in such a condescending way, as if she didn't know freedom, couldn't handle it, and Rachel vowed then and there to prove them all wrong.

It took her a while to make friends. All the other castaways, once she'd found them, immediately distrusted her and her still-immaculately pressed shirts that she painstakingly cleaned and ironed in the shitty boarding house she'd convinced to let her stay. Meeting Gina had been a revelation. She was so different from Rachel, carefree and beautiful and she laughed broadly and happily at every chance. She, too, was an import, an Italian off to find herself in a new world, and Rachel found herself entranced by her, by the way her hands moved as she talked and how brazenly she flirted with every boy that crossed her path.

Rachel's sexuality was something she hid in those early days; not like incest was something that had a flag and a march in the pride parade. Not like anyone would truly understand and sympathize with her, march on parliament demanding she have equal rights, shouting that she's just a person too and shouldn't she be able to live her life however she wants?

She probably could have just said she was gay. But even that lingered too close to the truth, came too close to exposing the unnaturalness of what she really was: a deviant. A freak. So broken even her creators didn't want her anymore. So her relationship with Gina had, from day one, been purely platonic by necessity. That suited Rachel just fine; she finally had a friend who was her age and though she couldn't express it, Gina understood - cared about, even - Rachel's anger and shame and fear. Gina listened as Rachel raged against her parents (funny how she'd returned to those monikers now) and didn't offer anything up but sympathetic smiles and hugs. Gina didn't tell Rachel what to do or how to feel, and she certainly didn't scribble on a notepad while Rachel exposed herself slowly, layer by layer, and Rachel loved her for that.

After a few false starts, Rachel finally managed to get a boyfriend. Sean was older than her, American, and he took charge, fucking her relentlessly whenever he felt like it and somehow Rachel managed to convince herself that this was what she wanted.

But it wasn't. It grated against her – not the sex, not really. That she could deal with. Mooning over him, holding hands and the way the word boyfriend rolled around in her mouth, seemed so very wrong. But what else could she do? It was the cost of her freedom, of normalcy, and she started to feel like a stranger in her own skin. When she looked in the mirror she barely recognized the person who looked back.

Gina, on the other hand, was ecstatic, squealing over every detail, organizing double dates and pushing Rachel to just admit it, you love him don't you? Rachel couldn't bring herself to tell the truth, because what did it matter? She left Dyad (was kicked out, the voice reminded her) to go try to live a normal life. Her past was the lie, and this, Sean and Gina and everyone else, was her new truth and maybe she'd just find a way to live with it.

She didn't, of course. She was too stubborn for that, and too weak, so one night when she was high as fuck and drinking tequila she let it all out. "I'm gay," she'd whispered against her Gina's arm as they lay cuddled on the couch and Rachel couldn't miss, couldn't misinterpret how her best friend's body went rigid. She knew then she'd made a mistake, and she hadn't even gotten to the truth yet.

Gina pulled away and they'd sat up, crossed legged and staring at each other. "That's…" Gina'd made a face and Rachel felt her heart plummet to her chest. She'd thought… she'd hoped… "What about Sean?" asked Gina, and she was angry, and Rachel didn't know what to say so she's shrugged, not making eye contact. "That's fucking low of you, leading him on like that," said Gina and that was probably true, but Rachel was too stunned, couldn't believe that this person, who'd listened to her so openly about everything else, was turning on her now. When Rachel needed her the most.

They stayed friends but it was strained from then on. Rachel shoved down the revelation, stayed with Sean despite Gina's glares, ignored the way Gina pulled away from her, wouldn't stand close to her. Rachel'd laughed and cried that she'd never be able to tell Gina: 'sorry, you're not my type', because it's a truth even more twisted than the one she'd let out, the one she wished she could stuff back in. She could feel the distance between them growing and growing, tried to claw it back with 'just kidding' and 'man, I was so wasted, what did I say?' But none of it worked and any thought of normalcy, of acceptance from the outside world, vanished. Suddenly Rachel found herself longing for the safety of the institute. They may have been watching, judging, but they never offered up those judgments unbidden; they let her reach for them on her own terms, instead of spitting them in her face.

Rachel remembers the night she spotted another clone, in a dingy basement nightclub six months after she'd arrived at Times Square. "Danielle," she'd breathed, loudly enough that Sean turned to look and she'd had to cough to cover up her mistake.

It's wasn't Danielle, of course, but another clone, someone else entirely. She was dancing in the corner with some guy, and she looked so free that it hurt Rachel and she had to look away. Thankfully the club was dark so no one saw the truth in front of them, identical copies on the same dance floor. Rachel wondered if Dyad knew, if they'd sent her here on purpose; 'here, be free, be with a clone if that's what you really want. See how you like it.'

Rachel knows deep down that they'd never be that magnanimous. Like they'd sacrifice their moment of self-awareness on her behalf. It was a moment they'd want to monitor-

Rachel'd stopped short at that moment, frozen in the middle of the floor. She looked around, scanned the faces around her for someone who was looking too closely, too interested, but everyone seemed lost in their own haze.

She watched her clone start to make out with the guy she was dancing with and she let out a bitter, disgusted sigh. What was she doing, thinking there was any chance of any of the other clones being as massively fucked up as she was. That was for her, and her alone.

She saw the couple break away after a moment, her identical shoving the guy away, yelling something Rachel couldn't hear over the beating pulse of the music and throwing herself back into the crowd, dancing with anyone she could find. Rachel took her chance then, knew she probably wouldn't get another chance like it, and entered the throng too - the messy, sweaty push of people - and slipped her way closer, closer until she was behind her, shoulder length brown hair, frizzy and unkempt in front of her face. She'd pressed closer, inches away but not touching, close enough that she could smell the familiar scent of herself, with the hint of something else, of weed and cinnamon and sweat and it was her but it wasn't. And then the girl's hands were on her, blindly pulling her closer and Rachel grinded against her, against her clone, and she'd have been excited that she was finally touching one if she wasn't so delirious, intoxicated by the heady rush of endorphins and hormones swirling around her.

She danced for what felt like hours but must have only been minutes, pressed against her, heart racing and cunt throbbing, but then the girl tried to turn around and Rachel panicked, unwilling or unable to handle the rejection that was about to occur, so she fled, turned on her heel and running out of the club into the warm spring air. She'd wrapped her arms around herself, shaking with fear and arousal and the sweat's slick under her hands, and then she could feel herself dry heaving, clutching her stomach, but there was nothing she could do about that. Still, she was so fucking horny and the thought of Sean pounding into her and writhing against her was the last thing she'd wanted.

The door opened behind her and a small rush of hope surged through her – maybe her sister knew she was there, felt her presence, wanted more, too – but it wasn't her, of course, but some other girl, disappointingly blonde and lighting the cigarette between her lips. It was enough, though, and Rachel had pushed her up against the brick wall, crashed against the girl until she'd stopped protesting, melted into the kiss and returned it in kind. And then Rachel'd led them into an alleyway and her fingers were under this strange girl's skirt and she'd thought that maybe this could be enough for her.  
It wasn't, but she'd always liked playing pretend.

Rachel went back to the boarding house right after, leaving the girl to pull down her skirt as she hailed a cab, fingers still sticky. She threw her things into her bag, crashed down to reception and commandeered their phone, dialing the number on the back of the business card they'd handed her as they escorted her onto the plane.

"I want to come home." Those five words had been like a magic wand, waved over her head and, poof, she was back in her room in Dyad, her belongings arranged neatly as she'd left them, like she'd never left at all.

It had been easy for her to fall back into the fold. They'd wanted to study her, of course, ask questions and quantify her freedom, and she was so glad to be safe, to be home, that she didn't care.

Sitting on the plane on her way back, she'd drafted an agenda for her return, for the things she wanted to be different. She wasn't the same Rachel who had left, that much she was sure of, so in her tight handwriting she made a list, of the way she wanted things to be. The first thing she wanted was to know. She wanted everything, served up on a silver platter if that's what it took: her history, the results and files on her sisters, down to the names of the people who'd made her. She wanted everything. Full disclosure.

The second thing she wanted - the only other thing she wanted - and this note was for herself more than anyone, was to live her life how she damn well wanted.

Hidden between the lines, that she didn't dare to speak, was:

Please be normal. Stop falling in love with them.

They'd give her full access without her even having to ask. As soon as she was out of her first session she'd been handed briefs and brought up to speed on what she'd missed on the last few months. She consciously turned her mind off when they mentioned Dani, refusing to hear that she was doing well and had gotten engaged and might finish her Master's early.

She didn't even stop for a moment to consider that this information, them giving it to her, was another way of controlling her. Rachel knew it wasn't freedom, could feel the weight of it from the moment it was given to her, but it was what she'd wanted, and if she'd learned anything in New York it's that getting what you want has a price, and you just have to move on.

And if that price was seeing Gina in the hallway, entirely too comfortable with the other behavioural psychologists, laughing along with a joke like she'd known them for years, well. Cash money.

Briefly Rachel wondered if maybe it was fluke. Maybe Gina happened to take up psychology in the three years since they'd met, somehow ended up at Dyad. But then Rachel'd remembered that an undergraduate degree took longer than that, and graduate work longer still. Probably even longer if your thesis is a six month field study in New York. She tried to focus on the logistical victory, on the successful insertion of a monitor after the fact. They'd never done that before, relied only on people selected from birth and childhood. It was a tactical victory that will help them moving forward.

It didn't stop the betrayal from squeezing her heart a little smaller.

She did see Danielle again, even though she tried her best not to, but the little side experiment pressed on and she saw Danielle one night, being tested. She'd looked older, and Rachel wanted to trace the laugh lines forming around Dani's eyes, could if she wanted to, because they were letting her into the rooms with the subjects now, allowing her to observe the testing which she too endured - though she was awake, able to ask questions or just quietly observe, soaking in every detail and cataloging it in her mind.  
She could touch Danielle, but she didn't, of course. She was past that. She was brazen on her return, determinately open with her sexuality, flirting with female staff members until someone at the top relented and suddenly she had her pick of the women. Staff, someone on the street, someone in the bar; all she had to do was point and then moments later she'd have them, in her bed or, more likely, the closest bathroom stall. Maybe she should have been more unnerved by it, the way they were basically acting like her pimps, noticed that she wasn't getting these women herself but was instead getting them through coercion or strong arming - and someone else's for that matter. But she didn't, because they were accepting her and helping her and, anyways, she was enjoying the power of bending the world to her liking, her command, with barely a glance. And the was finally over it and that was good enough for her.  
Danielle died on a Wednesday.

Rachel knows she's not supposed to remember that, to fixate on that; then again, this was her clone, her subject. Shouldn't she be apprised of the pertinent details of her life and death?

They'd wheeled the body in in front of her. She could feel the eyes on her, could sense the tension in the room – did everyone know what had happened, did they still talk about it when her back was turned? Rachel stared at the body and refused to let her heart break, sent it clear instructions, not now, not ever, as she forced herself to look at Dani, take in the details, the way her hand was clenched into a fist, the wisp of hair on her neck, the bullet hole in the middle of her forehead.

Rachel studied the details, scribbled notes onto a piece of paper, willing the tears back, took short, fruitless breaths she hoped were invisible to everyone else in the room.  
Subject 324B16 dead of apparent gunshot wound, she wrote, slowly, deliberately, then nodded to the attendant who wheeled Danielle away. She looked up as a thousand questions screamed through her mind, but they lodged in her throat and she knew if she spoke she'd cry and rule one was no crying, so she nodded curtly instead, turned on her heel, and got the hell out of there.

She made it to her room without breaking down, but just as she was about to crumble into a heap on her bedroom floor she remembered the cameras, for the first time in a while, so she'd swallowed it back in again instead. She returned to her office and bowed her head over her files, studying the reports of the other deaths – why had they not noticed this pattern before – and vowed she'd never be this weak again.

They hadn't wanted Rachel to meet Sarah. They did want her to meet the other clones; it had been their plan all along, but they wanted her first clone consultation to be with someone – anyone - else. Someone who hadn't slipped under their radar for all these years. And if Helena was the white whale, Sarah was the dark horse, storming out of nowhere, all vengeance and fury.

More than anything, Sarah was unpredictable. Beth, Danielle, Katja, they'd understood them, mostly. They'd known these women all their lives. Sarah, on the other hand, was new; her behavioural patterns hadn't yet been mapped out on spreadsheets and discussed in the lunchroom over coffee and snickers bars. Secretly – she'd resorted to whispering thoughts like these in her head, afraid to give them full voice even in the confines of her own mind – Rachel didn't think it'd matter if they'd done a full breakdown on Sarah. She'd probably wind up surprising them all the same.

But, as she'd argued, Sarah wasn't about to trust any of the Dyad employees she'd met so far. And she certainly wouldn't listen to anyone new. Their only shot – and they knew this was an outside chance but, dammit, they were desperate – was that maybe Sarah would listen to someone with the same face. Maybe it would trigger something in her. It was truly putting the theory of genetic attraction to the test; would their shared genome be enough to form an instant bond?

Their little side experiment, gone mainstream.

Sarah's file was, naturally, much thinner than the rest, the results of the lone test they'd performed on her when they thought she was Beth, a record of her interactions with Leekie and Paul, and hypotheses to how, exactly, she'd gotten away from them in the first place, her very existence a mystery. An errant splitting of a clone egg.

At least Sarah wasn't crazy, probably; though from the files Rachel read that Sarah was fierce, protective. Leekie'd described her as simmering with rage and Rachel was fascinated by this new creature, yet another variation on the same theme. She couldn't wait to know more, see more, to meet this punk tornado who'd taken the institute by storm, her name and existence rippling through the hallways. It was incredible that they'd gotten so excited at the prospect of a clone. Hadn't they been studying her for years?

Rachel stops breathing for a moment, when she sees Sarah for the first time. Something inside her, something so close to the surface is on fire, so alive and vibrant and real and Rachel wants to reach out and touch it, pull back the flimsy outer layer and feel the heat that burns underneath.

She knows it'll be like touching the sun, but she wants it anyways. She needs to know.  
As she sits across from the slumping figure across from her, Rachel can't help wondering, can't make her mind stop asking: if Sarah and Helena hadn't been taken away, hadn't disappeared into the night in the hands of a rebelling operative, where would she be now? Would Sarah be sitting in her place, calmly trying to ensnare her? And would she herself sign the papers? Would she be spitting out recriminations in a working class accent, slumped in the chair but somehow being in control of the room?  
Would she finally be normal?

But Rachel knows that if their places had been swapped, Sarah, in her innate Sarah-ness, wouldn't do what she'd done. Sarah would have stayed in New York, the anger that had thrummed through Rachel under the surface erupting into rage until she burned all of her Dyad bridges to the ground. And Rachel, uptight prim and proper Rachel, would have signed the papers, too afraid of anything else.

It's a terrifying thought. That, after all this, hundreds of clones have somehow proved biological determinism anyway. Even though they're the same genetically, it feels like Sarah is destined to be Sarah, and Rachel is destined to be Rachel. That's the only explanation she can think of to explain how this person across from her is so, so very different.

Different enough that when Rachel gasps underneath Sarah she doesn't see herself above her like she always feared she would, but someone else entirely. Someone who's her but not her and that's probably what she's attracted to the most. The possibility. The potential, realized in front of her. It's not self involved. It's fate.

To Rachel's surprise, she wasn't the one to suggest it. It should have horrified her, that her longing lay so close to the surface that even Sarah could sense it, knew she could use it to her benefit. Sarah thinks she is using Rachel, manipulating her with her body and her touch, like one day Rachel will soften and agree to let Kira go.

Like she has that kind of power. Rachel made the call, but she didn't make the call. But she's content to let Sarah think that, let her believe that she's using Rachel when she's really the one being used. There's a part of Rachel that thinks, hopes, that maybe Sarah wants this too, has thought about this before and is using it as an excuse to finally just try. But Sarah's too angry for that, too bitter, too rough.

And, oh, the anger. The steely gazes and simmering contempt; how much a leap is it, from rage to passion, from passion to love? The line seems slick and slippery to Rachel as she pushes Sarah against the wall, jams her knee between her thighs and whispers in her ear as she grinds tighter, closer. Lengthy eye contact means one of two things, love or hate, and as Rachel stares, their eyes locked as she pulls down whatever torn jeans Sarah's worn today, she feels like she can't tell which is which anymore, and that's enough for her.

It's helpful that least one of them feels bad about what they're doing, though. Sarah fills the spaces between the gasps and fucks and screams with such overwhelming shame and rage that it frees Rachel from it all and she can just focus on herself, for once. On how it is, how it feels. She doesn't have to look over her shoulder, wary of the judgement and sideways looks; finally she's allowed to just be. To indulge herself in this lust once and for all, let it out before it encompasses her completely. Before it twists up into love again.

Sarah's anger makes all the much better. It makes it rougher, all fingernails and teeth and Sarah, constantly testing to see how far she can push Rachel before Rachel pushes back.

Luckily, Rachel has a high tolerance for pain.

Breathless fucking inevitably leads to languid cuddling. Sarah'd resisted at first, pulled away, eager to reclaim her clothes and her body and get the fuck out of there. "I don't do cuddling," was all she'd said as she pulled away.

Rachel'd laughed softly. "You know that I know you do," she'd whispered and openly reveled in the glare she'd gotten in return.

Trust no one. That was the rule.

Sarah had reluctantly climbed back into bed, stiffly put her arms around Rachel, who'd burrowed in, finally, blissfully, content. "Shouldn't this be the other way around?" Sarah'd asked after a moment, confusion softening her tone, and Rachel decided it was one question she doesn't need to answer.

Sarah comes back nearly every day. She's always resistant, surly, making her demands as she marches through the door, glaring at Rachel as Rachel says again and again, "maybe tomorrow," but then Rachel's lips are on hers and suddenly, finally, though Sarah keeps fighting, she stops fighting back.

"Did you ever-" Rachel stops, frozen as she lies in bed, watching Sarah find her clothes that had been flung across the room. Sarah wiggles her pants over her hips, "Did I ever what?" she asks, distracted.

Rachel shakes her head and closes her eyes, sighing softly into the pillow.

"Nothing," she whisperes, missing the look Sarah gives her, the questioning worry that probably, definitely, would have broken her.

They'd gotten Kira, eventually, as Rachel knew they would. Sarah and Alison and Cosima and that French scientist, Delphine, who she'd warned Leekie about ages ago, but the woman's charms extended to both sexes, apparently. Rachel knew they'd find a way, eventually; they were creative and smart and, most of all, desperate. She'd seen first-hand the fire in Sarah's eyes, expected it as she razed through the halls of the institute to bring her little girl home. Rachel didn't mind, though. They'd been able to do preliminary testing on the girl that would keep them busy for a while, and it wasn't like they'd forget about her, now that they knew she was out there.

And she'd gotten what she wanted, flexed her power and proven to herself, to Sarah, to everyone else, that when Rachel Duncan says jump everyone else flies into the air. While some would call her tryst hollow, Rachel knows that the power is in the taking, not in the act itself, and besides, Sarah is so deliciously open with her emotions that it won't be hard to find something else to hold over her head.

Not that Sarah's first attempt at using Rachel had helped her in any way; Rachel made sure of that.

A week later and completely unbidden, Sarah comes back.

Rachel gapes at her, surprised. She shouldn't be, she knows better; she'd planned for Sarah to be unpredictable, the wild card, but she didn't damn well plan for her to be standing at her door, something unreadable in her eyes.

Rachel also didn't plan to be pushed up against the wall, Sarah's lips attacking her with a ferocity that feels like anger but Rachel knows, doesn't know how she knows but she knows, isn't anger at all. She pushes Sarah away, Sarah's breathing heavy, mouth open and glistening as she gasps for air. Rachel realizes in a shock of clarity that Sarah's shame is gone, has been gone for a while, and she was too busy feeling proud of herself for being in control to notice it slipping from her grasp.

Sarah takes another step towards Rachel and Rachel flinches and steps back in kind.  
Sarah raises her eyebrow. "So now you have a problem?" she mocks softly, laughing, in on the joke as she steps forwards, but when Rachel steps back again Sarah frowns and her shoulders droop, confusion on her face.

"You'd better leave," says Rachel, wiping at her lips primly.

"But—."

"Get out!" she screams, then catches herself, straightening her dress and furtively trying to calm her racing heart. "It would be best if you left," she finishes, calmer, mask slipped back into place.

Sarah stares at her, measuring her up; is this another ploy, another game? Rachel clenches her jaw, blinks slowly, deliberately staring down the face that should have been hers but never could. Sarah nods after a moment, clenches her fists and wipes her face clean too; a mirror between them now wouldn't make any difference. But then Sarah's resolve breaks. "Rachel," she whispers and Rachel flinches, revolts at the sound of her name, spoken so tenderly. Like Sarah actually means it.

"We'll be in touch," Rachel says, and they both know it won't be Rachel on the other end of that call when it comes.

Rachel watches as Sarah leaves, ever so slightly hunched but trying not to show it, pulling the door closed behind her, not slamming it because, after all, she's still in the belly of the beast. The latch clicks and Rachel feels it, in her throat. She walks herself to the bathroom, lifts the toilet lid and vomits unceremoniously into the bowl. Her chest heaves once, twice, three times and then she's finished, flushing the toilet, watching the vomit swirl away before she wipes off her mouth and walks back out to the window.

She stares outside until she sees Sarah stumble out the front door, sees her look furtively back at the hotel for a moment before disappearing into the darkness. Rachel's left only with her reflection in the glass. She makes eye contact with herself for a moment, notes with satisfaction the blankness she finds, the dark steely gaze staring back at her from the dark. She'd push down the emotions that quell up as she sees her - sister? lover? clone, she settles on - walk away, but they feelings are no longer there. There's nothing left to stop.

She's finally free.


End file.
